


The Cinema Show

by exeterlinden



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:30:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeterlinden/pseuds/exeterlinden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On an island like Wilby, and in a time like the 1920's, a local scandal was not easily forgotten. And certainly not if said scandal evolved around people of the Oscar Wilde sort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cinema Show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sageness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/gifts).



> I had three wonderful betas for this story. Thank you so much [](http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/profile)[**nos4a2no9**](http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/), [](http://mizface.livejournal.com/profile)[**mizface**](http://mizface.livejournal.com/) and [](http://imaginethetruth.livejournal.com/profile)[**imaginethetruth**](http://imaginethetruth.livejournal.com/)!

**Part I**

Arriving from the mainland, the first thing you will see of Wilby island is Old Quay Road which leads to what is now generally accepted as the city middle. If you follow that road out on the other side of the town - past the Loyalist and Iggy's Diner, the hardware store and the handful of grocery shops – you will come to an area of abandoned buildings, some of them collapsed into rubble, some still precariously standing. This amputated part of the town of Wilby used to be a nice neighbourhood, an integrated part of the city which had been supported by the once thriving fishing industry on the Island. Without the sufficient flow of money it has withered and died out like the limb of a tree. But years ago there had been several coffee houses, a bar, a gentleman's club. And, on the large plot that townsfolk now use for letting their dogs off the leash - where there's nothing but grass, weeds and young Dogberry trees - there used to be a cinema.

To arrive at the beginning of this story – which is to be the story of the opening day of that cinema - I shall now take you back eighty-four years. Ladies and gentlemen, here we go.

As we start slowly rewinding, the changes seem at first undramatic. Red dogberries shoot up from the ground to reattach themselves to the branches above, weeds and grass wilt and then reappear, it rains, it snows, the suns shines.

And then, as the sprockets pulling us back gather speed, suddenly there are bulldozers and men at work. It's a demolishing crew, but going backwards like this, it looks like they're builders. Between their hands, a large, squat building appears. Rickety at first, but as we're watching, chips of paint rise like butterflies from the ground and land on the exterior walls. Broken windows reassemble like puzzles, the wind in reverse blows roof tiles back into place. In the ever changing light that flickers with the shifting of day and night, we suddenly see electrical light bulbs shining from the windows. Cars and people begin to flit by as the movie theatre takes shape in front of us.

And here are the first (or last) cinemagoers: Bored teenagers on scooters or in beat up Mazdas. Small crowds that appear haphazardly, only at the cinema because there's nothing better to do. But as we skip back in time, this changes. Slowly, the number of cinemagoers grows and becomes more varied.

Now, in time lapse, we see the crowds filling. Large groups of people enter and leave the cinema through the double glass doors with their golden, curved handles. They look like marching ants from nature program sequences, rapidly moving back and forth in regular intervals every day. Their clothes change from bright polyesters to subdued wools and cotton.

We see movie posters come and go. And we see mayors and other island big shots arrive and depart in first Mercedes, then Volkswagens - a stream of fashionable cars that seem somewhat extravagant for an Island of barely one thousand square kilometres - until we're all the way back to the black Ford Automobiles, and lastly a couple of horse-drawn carriages.

A few other buildings appear and disappear around the movie theatre, which stays mostly the same, with the exception of a couple of flashes of radical paint jobs. The brightly lit entrance sign is replaced first with shining neon, and then plain old painted plywood. Back we go, until we stop at the image of a singular person balancing on a ladder with the very first sign, which reads “Wonderful Wilby Movie Theatre” in bold white on a red background.

This is where we start going forward again. It is Sunday, the 1st of August, 1923, and this is the opening day of Wilby Island's first movie theatre.

The man climbing down the ladder to inspect his work is in his late thirties. He's tanned dark brown from a life of working outdoors. He's wearing workman's overalls and seems to be slightly round-shouldered. His name is Walter MacDonald. He is a local jack-of-all-trades, who, apart from creating and hanging the shop sign, has also erected the exterior and interior walls and painted them, as well as installed plumbing and electricity almost by himself, under the commission of Daniel Jarvis, with notable additional funding by himself.

Now, he squints up at the sign, judging whether it's aligned with the facade's vertical woodwork, and then nods to himself, satisfied with the result. He takes the ladder out back, and then he comes around and enters the building, carefully checking his hands for wet paint before he puts his palms on the gleaming new brass handles.

“They'll come,” he says, by way of greeting – and not for the first time today - to the tall man hunched over papers behind the ticket counter in the dimly lit, plushly carpeted lobby. The man is wearing a high waisted jacket, cuffed trousers and a grey fedora. He has dressed himself for the occasion, but without knowing it, he has also made himself instantly identifiable as a non-islander. He looks up at the sound of Walter's voice, but doesn't answer. All he can manage is a nervous smile before he returns to his book-keeping. 

And the man, Daniel Jarvis, has good reason to be nervous.

Eventually, the Wonderful Wilby Movie Theatre will do very well. _We_ know this. We have seen islanders milling in and out of the main entrance in a steady stream, for many years to come. The most alert of us may even have caught – among the flashing images – an older version of Dan himself, arriving for a premiere in his very own black Ford T. 

But right now, at the opening day, Dan Jarvis cannot possibly predict this. At this point in time, he can only dream about it, without daring to believe it.

Because what Dan Jarvis currently knows is this: After travelling across Canada from his native Victoria to Wilby, lugging a precious 35 mm film projector, with the dream of opening an independent movie theatre (which would be the easternmost picture house in Canada, beating the Halifax Nickelodeon), he found himself involved in a local scandal that cost him his marriage, his house, his parents-in-law's general funding, and what little public reputation he had garnered on the island.

This happened over a year ago. But on an Island like Wilby, and in a time like this, a local scandal is not easily forgotten. And certainly not if the scandal evolved around people of the Oscar Wilde sort.

What you have to understand is this: In the big Canadian cities in the early twenties there was a so-called _pansy craze_ coming on. In certain neighbourhoods flamboyantly effeminate men and androgynously dressed ladies could walk down the street without raising any eyebrows. There were even bootleg bars, jazz houses and dance halls which all catered directly to people who were _queer_ that way.

But Wilby was far from the American border, and the influx of American money which was the onset of this new cultural liberalism. Wilby did not have a fashionable, big city _pansy club_. All Wilby had was a stretch of coastline, sheltered from the onshore wind by a nape of rocks running parallel to the coast, and protected from sight by a strip of dense spruce forest. This had been a safe place for the Wilby _unspeakables_ , a well guarded secret for several years, until the 1922 Watch Mass Arrest, which was instigated by then-mayor Brent Fisher, and reluctantly carried out by local Police Constable Buddy French. 

Dan, who had struggled with insomnia for many years before arriving in Wilby, had come upon the Watch entirely by coincidence on one of his late night walks. It had not helped his sleepless nights, but rather, it had awoken him to the source of the restlessness that had plagued him ever since young adulthood. He was unfortunate and inexperienced enough to be one of the men who didn't get away in time, a year ago, when the police arrived with their lanterns.

In the end, no names were published in the local paper, and all charges of gross indecency were dropped without exception, thanks to a lot of people each using what little influence they had - and in no small part because of the wilful obfuscation by Constable French, who felt a strong personal reluctance against pursuing the case.

Dan Jarvis' name was never publicly connected to the event. But the community passed judgement anyway.

And so, when Mrs. Jarvis left the Island, taking with her the dog, the forty-five piece set of fine china, and most of the funding for the picture house - which at this point was little more than a stack of hardwood supplies and a plot of land - people had a fair idea of what might have taken place in the Jarvis household.

Shunned by the local community, but with all of his money (and most of his dreams) tied up in the cinema, Dan was left feeling desperately short of options. In fact, unbeknownst to all but a very few, he had spent one bleak day after his wife had left, repeatedly trying and failing to end his own life.

One of the people who _does_ know about this is the man standing in the cinema lobby with him today. 

Walter, who recently told Dan that he likes to be called Duck by friends, was one of only two people who visited Dan in hospital, where he had been admitted after what was to be his last suicide attempt, in a subsequently long and happy life.

That visit at the hospital had been the beginning of a business partnership and a tentative friendship. Dan's movie theatre had only been completed because of the financial aid and generously low wage demands offered by the man who is now here with him. Dan Jarvis is currently fretting over his account books, thanks in no little part to the debt that he feels he owes Duck McDonald.

As Duck looks on, Dan goes over the figures again, writing down the same numbers for the umpteenth time in his neat handwriting, as if it is really possible to detract from the lure of a motion picture cinema the stubbornness of conservative small-town people.

Duck watches him for a little while with a small smile on his lips, before he wipes his hands on his trousers and turns away. He walks across the lobby and steps through the small wallpapered door that leads into the projection room. Here, he regards the impressive piece of machinery for a moment before he reaches out and carefully checks that the film is laced up properly, following the film spool with a finger through the many wheels and sprockets, and mouthing the names of each of them as he goes. Dan Jarvis taught him how to do this, along with everything else he needed to know to work as a projectionist.

When he's done, Duck lets out a low satisfied hum. He sits down on the stool squeezed in between the projector and the back wall.

Duck MacDonald isn't in the same nervous state as his business partner on the other side of the door. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, Duck is rarely afraid anymore. He has achieved the calm of a person who believes he has seen his darkest days, and overcome them. He _knows_ himself.

It is only a year ago that Duck returned to the island, after fifteen years away, with a sailor's tattoo on his left arm, a strong dedication to the Temperance movement, and a new-found acceptance of his own nature.

Duck had only been back for a couple of months when the mass arrest took place. He hadn't even been aware of what the Watch had become. No-one had known to let him in on that secret, thanks to a pact made a long time ago between Duck and another islander who knew how to keep a secret.

But the fact of the matter is that, like Dan Jarvis, Duck is a man of the Oscar Wilde sort. Duck doesn't call himself that, having never been made acquainted with the works of Mr. Wilde. But he's come to know plenty of other names for the same thing, and he knows what he likes.

He was seventeen when an affair with another local boy had made him sure of something he'd long suspected. Their furtive relationship had been a short one. The other boy, Buddy French, who (as we know) would later become a police officer, had had more of a choice, and he had made the safe one. Their parting had been amicable, but after having known what it could be like, Duck never felt as if _he_ had much of a choice at all. 

It was this realization that had made him leave Wilby at twenty-two years of age. But when he stepped onto the mainland for the first time in his life, he realized that he had made no other plans than leaving. He ended up spending many years as a day worker. Living like that, becoming an alcoholic had been almost inevitable, in spite of the widespread alcohol ban. Liquor was all around him due to the places he travelled, the sort of people he met, and the speakeasies he frequented, where most men, like him, had even more reasons to want to numb their minds than war memories and the recent recession.

Duck travelled across the width of the country in a drifting, drunken line - first following the railroad westward, then working as a hired hand on the farms that had begun sprouting up all over the prairie, and finally ending up in the West Coast salmon industry - before he found the will to quit the bottle and work his way back home.

He returned to Wilby as a man acquitted of all moral and religious guilt about his inclinations. If he had learned anything during his years on the road, it was this: even if what he was, was considered to be unspeakable and even illegal, he was far from alone in feeling the way he did. And having seen the things he had during his years on the road - the hard-pressed lives, the drunken violence and the social injustice - Duck was too much of a practical man to believe that loving another could be such an abominable crime.

The second reason why Duck MacDonald isn't too worried about the outcome of the day is this: He doesn't care much about losing the money that he has put into the cinema. He has a fair amount of capital from his inheritance, and from several years of working and living cheap, with nothing to spend his paycheck on after he stopped putting it into the pockets of bootleggers. 

What he _really_ cares about, he feels more and more certain will come to pass. There are not many worldly things that Duck MacDonald wants, but he has found himself inexplicably drawn to Daniel Jarvis ever since he first set eyes on him. 

Dan had been a new face on the island after his return. A handsome man, soft-spoken and endlessly nervous.

When Dan hired the local workmen to dig out the foundation for the cinema, the other hands had laughed at him behind his back when he brought out trays of lemonade and awkwardly tried to make conversation, using words like _gosh_ and _golly._

Duck, who himself had to take plenty of grief from the crew for joining the Temperance movement, found it oddly endearing. He had to be careful that his eyes didn't linger too long on Dan walking back inside, in his slightly foppish, big city suits.

This was why Duck had found himself keeping a careful eye on Dan after hearing about the arrests, and this was how he finally ended up at Dan's hospital bedside, after his “unfortunate fall” which had somehow left rope marks around his neck.

“I'll still help you build the cinema. If you want.” Duck'd said, standing indecisively in the doorway while the nurse stared at him.

Dan coughed, “Really?”

“Yes.”

At this, Dan smiled. And that was when Duck realised that he was experiencing something that hadn't happened to him since he was seventeen: He was falling in love.

... Now, let's go back to the projection room for a moment. Duck, sitting on the stool, checks his pocket watch. There is still an hour to go before their first scheduled show. With his watch still in hand, he starts slightly when the door opens. The room is too small for two people, so Dan only leans in a little through the doorway. In the small, hot space Duck can smell Dan's soap and cologne. He can feel the small hairs on his arms rising in response, a pleasant, tingling sensation. 

“There's not a problem, is there?” Dan asks, nervously.

“No.” Duck pockets the watch and rises to stand. He dares to put a hand on the other man's shoulder. 

“Dan,” he says, “ _they'll come._ ”

Dan leans into the touch a little. His hand comes up to hesitantly close around Duck's wrist. Duck's heart starts pounding at the shy, yearning expression on his face. But then Dan shakes himself, and moves away.

”Yes,” He says, looking down, ”Yes, I hope you're right.”

Dan has been living in Wilby for close on three years, but he is still a newcomer. Duck - who has been living away for near on fifteen and has barely been back for one - is not. He knows how curious the islanders really are. He knows that behind all those studiously closed windows and doors down the street, there are men and women peeking through curtains, waiting and wishing for something to happen. He feels certain that eventually, one of those people will be unable to curb their curiosity any longer, and when someone takes that first step, it will be like a dam breaking.

And this is the third reason why Duck MacDonald doesn't feel particularly nervous.

 

**Part II**

But who is that person going to be? We know just as well as Duck that somewhere outside the empty cinema, that missing link is walking around: The person who is going to connect what we've seen today with the golden age which lies ahead for Dan's movie theatre.

To answer that question, I will now steer you out of the cinema and a couple of kilometres back down Quay Road to _La Glace_ which, like other ice cream parlours across the country, is enjoying its heyday during the Prohibition.

On a hot day like this, the place is filled to the brim with people in their Sunday best. People have come here straight from church, longing to be cooled down a little. But you won't find anyone discussing today's sermon over their chocolate sundaes and ice cream sandwiches. The topic on everyone's lips is the Wonderful Wilby Movie Theatre, and its owners. People make pessimistic predictions about the life span of this modern craze. Some make whispered allusions to the nature of the so-called business partnership between Duck and the rumour-ridden mainlander. But underneath all of this, there's a palpable, unspoken current of excitement. In the corner, the few who have been to the Nickelodeon in Halifax share their experiences, and even the conservative naysayers lean in to listen.

Looking over the heads of all these people, we see a couple approaching outside the parlour. They walk past the bold, inverted letters painted on the glass front, and the man respectfully steps back and lets the woman get the door for herself before he enters behind her.

This man stepping into _La Glace_ is Police Constable Buddy French. The woman is his wife, Carol. We shall hear more about her, later.

But for now, here is Buddy. As he steps into the parlour, people raise their heads, and give him a nod and a smile before they return to their conversations. Everyone knows him, and most people like him.

His unassailable position in the community is further secured by his family history which is intimately intertwined with the island's. Apart from being the grandchild of the city founder, he is also a third generation law enforcement officer. Here, people like what they know. And when they look at Buddy French, they don't just see _him_. They see Stephen French, his grandfather, and Howard French, his father. Both were authoritative men - true islanders and city fathers and so, when the islanders look at Buddy, people are seeing what they expect to see.

Looking at the man from an outsider's perspective, however, you can't help but notice the discord between the law enforcement uniform, and the man inside it. We see what the islanders don't notice: the slapdash way his lanyard is fastened over his mostly unbuttoned tunic, his unruly hair, the crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes peeking out from his handcuff pouch. The slight widening around his middle, and the early wrinkles that call into question a life of strict teetotalism.

True to his affable name, Buddy is in essence an easy-going man. He likes the community. He doesn't mind the work of being a constable because he likes helping out with stray cattle, adolescent shoplifters and stranded automobiles. But it has always filled Buddy with unease to think about a real crime ever occurring on Wilby Island. He never felt the all-encompassing sense of responsibility to the island that his predecessors did. In fact, he had spent many years of his life not wanting to be the man that Wilby expected him to be.

This silent, internal opposition first took hold of him at age seventeen, when he spent a summer lobster fishing off the coast with Duck MacDonald. He received his first kiss that summer. Alone out on the boat with Duck, far away from shore, he experienced for the first time the pleasure derived from another person's fumbling, earnest touches.

Buddy may have had a choice that Duck did not - he had later fallen in love with and married a woman without opposing his own nature in the least – but to him, that didn't change the way he'd felt that summer.

With the kind of home he came from, Buddy had never before doubted the sanctity of the law. Growing up on the island, he had never thought to question the majority's ability to define wrong and right, either.

But from seventeen and onwards, after breaking off a liaison that seemed to him inherently good, only because - according to everything he'd ever been told – it somehow _had_ to be bad, he felt a slowly growing doubt beginning to distance him from the island that he loved.

At twenty-three, this doubt made Buddy decide to go all the way to Vancouver for his police training, instead of going to Halifax like his father and grandfather had done.

And the Vancouver that Buddy arrived in, in the early years of the twentieth century, was a mass of paradoxes destined to challenge his island upbringing. There were labour strikes, picket lines, prohibitionists and bootleggers, short-haired women arguing openly with anti-suffragists in the streets.

While the early post war years had been plagued by deep economic depression, Canadian cities were now beginning to flourish. Bored with war and hard times - and flush with new money - the Vancouverites were ready to be liberal. So while the government were drawing up increasingly atrocious anti-immigration laws, a small revolution was slowly beginning to take place in some of the cafes and dance clubs, where people of different ethnicity could be seen drinking coffee or doing the Foxtrot together.

Buddy adopted the strategy of keeping quiet about the bars he frequented when he was at the Police Academy, and never mentioning the Academy when he went out.

One night he was leaving a nondescript bar in Gastown, when someone called out: “Hey! Hey?”

It took him a moment to realize that he was the one being hailed, so he had already walked a couple of metres, unlit cigarette in his mouth and a box of matches in his hand, before he turned around to face a young woman of Korean descent standing by the entrance with her arms folded across her chest.

“Are you leaving?” she demanded, sounding almost piqued.

Buddy regarded her for a moment, intrigued at her manner.

“No, I suppose not,” he tried. He took a couple of steps back towards her.

The woman lit up in a smile, her whole demeanour transformed in an instant.

“Good. Then you can lend me a cigarette.”

He watched her some more while she leaned in to touch the tip of the cigarette to the flame he offered. She stepped back on her high heels, brushing her hair away from her face, and sighed contentedly. Then she looked up at him, cocking her head.

“What's your name, then?”

Her name was Carol Sung, and she made him feel something that he hadn't since he'd lain in a fishing boat staring up at the sky, lobster cages on one side and a warm body pressed against his on the other: Outside a jazz club in Gastown, Buddy French was falling in love for the second time in his life.

And so, five years later, Buddy had returned to Wilby with a new perspective on life, and with a mainland wife who had instantly become the talk of the town from the minute she stepped off the ferry in her cloche hat and silk stockings.

Because he'd had his innate sense of wrong and right challenged every time he'd fallen in love, Buddy had returned to the island with a healthy scepticism in regard to the laws he was commissioned to uphold. The Watch Scandal had affected him more than anyone could guess. Buddy was a conscientious man, and he found that he couldn't - unlike many other policemen, who routinely did so on other charges - discount the fact that he himself was guilty of the crime for which these men were arrested.

Duck was the only one who knew this. But that didn't appease Buddy's sense of guilt as he saw the defeated expression on the faces of the men he and his colleague had brought in during the mass arrest. His only relief back then had been that Duck MacDonald hadn't been among the men who now faced the prejudice of the entire island community.

... But as Buddy settles with his wife on the last two available seats in the ice cream parlour, he can't help but be aware of what is taking place around them. Listening to the muttered talk, he realizes that Duck, who for all of his life had gone out of his way to avoid being noticed, has now put himself at the centre of attention. And once again Buddy feels that gnawing guilt at having been a part of the events that put all of this into motion.

After Pastor Finn's sermon – an eclectic mix of the The Golden Calf and Soddom and Gomorrah - Buddy and Carol's walk to the creamery had been filled with stilted and careful conversation. Both of their minds were running in similar directions, down Quay Road to the cinema house, while each of them struggled with their own sense of shame.

Because the fact of the matter is that, sitting in _La Glace_ , Buddy isn't alone in being affected by the situation. On the other side of the table, Carol French is equally preoccupied with the hunched backs and low tones surrounding them. Just like her husband, Carol has had her own personal reasons to follow the development of the movie theatre with keen interest. 

This last year, while the Cinema House has slowly taken shape, Carol's life has also been changing. She has had life-altering epiphanies, she has made dramatic changes in her approach to life. She had almost lost faith in her husband of seven years, only to regain it with a vengeance. And the seed for all of this was planted in one day. One pivotal day, where - trying to achieve something formidable - she had ended up doing something that was to her unforgivable.

A year ago, on June 5th \- in a state of panicked determination - Carol cut down and hid the lifeless body of Dan Jarvis, minutes before a handful of sceptic Wilby women arrived at the communal hall for the island's first suffragette meeting.

She spent the entire seventy-five minutes of the meeting pale and silent, oblivious to the talk around her, with her gaze fixed firmly on the cupboard under the stairs where a sliver of Dan's green jacket was peeking out. But it wasn't until afterwards - when she had rushed the women out of the building and hurried to the unmoving man with the noose still looped around his neck – that she finally checked for signs of life and called for help. As hospital staff carried the limp body from the building to the ambulance pick-up, the full horror of what she had done had come to her.

Now, for us to understand how Carol French could do this, it is important that we know a little more about the woman who moved from Vancouver to Wilby, to be with Buddy French.

The Carol Sung that Buddy had fallen in love with in front of a jazz club in Vancouver was in no way a cold or inconsiderate person. But she _was_ a person determined not to let herself be defeated by anything or anyone. Carol was the daughter of Korean labourers who had come to Canada to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway. In her native town of Vancouver, she had always been an immigrant first and foremost. This was a kind of prejudice she had taught herself how to disarm.

Firm believers in the importance of education, Mr. and Mrs. Sung had used the money they'd earned to send their only child to a women's college. Here, Carol studied hard (which they approved of), took up smoking (which they didn't) – and in every aspect ended up throwing herself into the emerging _flapper_ lifestyle, with everything it entailed. She ditched her corset, joined the suffragettes and shortened her hemline in order to be able to dance. She learned to argue her case, not to bow down to prejudice, and to stay defiantly in people's line of sight until they accepted her.

In Vancouver, she had been fully armed to walk down the street on a white man's arm, and to defend that same man from the distrustful hostility of her extended Korean family. But coming to Wilby she was suddenly a mainlander, first, and _Bud's wife_ second. Here, her main offence was suddenly no longer being a liberal, Korean woman in racially mixed marriage, but being the city girl who had corrupted the Island Son. As a result, she had been met by a bewildering mix of veiled hostility and condescending kindness. Carol had spent a whole life combating obstacles. She had navigated both downtown Vancouver, and the Korean neighbourhood on Dupont Street, which was in its own way an island community. Getting the women of the island interested in women's rights seemed a nearly impossible task, but meeting a barrier, Carol did what she had always done: she threw everything she had into transcending it.

It had taken her six years to convince five women to come to her sufragette meeting. In those six years on the island, tremors of doubt had snaked into Carol's faith in herself, and in her marriage. When Carol had met Buddy in Vancouver, his easy acceptance and quiet admiration had been a revelation. But after following him to Wilby, she had begun to suspect that she had underestimated how much a place can shape a person. When she saw her husband laugh deferentially at the mayors patronizing jokes, and bow his head with the rest of the community at Sunday services of fire and brimstone, she worried that maybe the man she had married in Vancouver was not entirely the same man she now lived with in Wilby.

After Dan had been taken to the hospital, Buddy had arrived to take her statement. They sat on the stairs to the City Hall, and Carol watched her husband while he listened intently, nodded, wrote down notes. She realised that she saw no judgement. She was stopped short. “What's happened to me?”

Buddy looked up, regarding her for a moment, before finally reaching out to fold his arms around her. “If you hadn't cut him down, he would have died. You saved him.”

“I don't understand why he would do that to himself.”

“Dan Jarvis is one of the Watch boys.” Buddy admitted quietly. 

“Oh.” Even Carol had heard enough of the town gossip to know why that could be a reason for seeking out the solid pinewood rafts in the City Hall. She had only heard whispered speculation about who the Watch pansies might be. She had never really considered that of course Buddy would know the name of each and one of them.

“Mr. Jarvis doesn't need for people to know about this.” Buddy pulled away. He noddedd decisively to himself before standing.

Carol stood up on the stairs next to him.“Where are you going?”

“To the hospital. I'm going to have a chat with the doctors and the nurses, and just... remind them of their oaths.”

Carol watched Buddy walk away, suddenly aching for her husband - for his embrace, and quiet, steady determination. As if sensing this, Buddy turned around, holding out a hand. “Come on.”

Three days later, Carol stood awkwardly just inside of Dan Jarvis' hospital room. Her eyes kept drifting downward to the red, swollen lines around Dan's neck. She had placed a gift basket on his bedside table before stepping back. She had offered polite inanities and well wishes, and now she found herself at a loss for words. “Buddy – Constable French – will make sure that the nurses and the doctors don't...” She hesitated. “What have _you_ told them?”

“Oh,” Dan said, voice weak, but a self-deprecating smile playing on his lips, “I slipped.”

The sheer preposterous audacity of it startled a smile out of her. She hadnt expected this kind of dry humour from a man who had tried to kill himself three days beforehand. Carol quickly schooled her expression, afraid to be misunderstood. “I am so very glad that you didn't... that you're...” She stopped, fidgeting nervously. “I won't tell anyone what happened, of course,” She finally continued, embarrassed in the knowledge that it could too easily be interpreted as a self-preserving gesture. She was wholly unaccustomed to second-guessing her own motivations.

Dan only nodded his head.

At the same moment a young nurse poked her head into the room “Mr. Jarvis, there's someone here to see you.”

“I should go.” Carol left no room for response before fleeing out of the room. With her head lowered, preoccupied, she didn't remember until much later passing Duck MacDonald in the hallway. She hurried out of the hospital, and down the street to her home - all the way berating herself for being unable to find a way to ask for forgiveness.

Apart from that awkward visit at the hospital, Carol hasn't talked to Dan Jarvis since. But she finally realised that her husband was not bowing down to conformity, but rather treading a careful balance between opposition and compromise. She had learned the hard way what Buddy had unconsciously known all along: that the people of Wilby could be likened to a dumb mule which would only be led if it was done so gently that the tug of the reins would go unnoticed.

In the year that followed, she changed tack. She joined the Fishermen's Women Foundation, the Temperance movement, the Ladies' Book Club and the Ladies' Bible Study Group. She helped collect clothes for the unfortunate, participated in decorating the church for holidays and baked an endless amount of pies for congregational meetings and town festivities. She found out that it was possible to deliberate on women's right to vote, or the dire economic conditions for widows, while sipping tea, or reading scripture, or peeling apples for Christmas pies. Now, sitting across the table from her husband, in a skirt that's longer than they used to be, she looks around the ice cream parlour. She is no longer the one being talked about, but today that doesn't give her any satisfaction.

For the first time in the five years Carol has lived on the island, Irene, the owner's wife, comes down to serve them personally. Buddy and Carol exchange glances. Once upon a time, it would have pleased Carol. Now, she wonders if accepting the expulsion of another mainlander may be the price she would have to pay to finally become an islander.

“Here you go, Buddy. Mrs. French.” Irene places their cups of coffee in front of them, and steps back, wiping her hands on her apron. She hesitates, shifting her weight back and forth. “So. How about that movie theatre, eh? That won't last long,” she finally says with a discernible note of satisfaction.

Carol, who had already shifted her attention to her drink, stops stirring. She runs the edge of her spoon along the rim of the china cup before placing it on the saucer. Then she looks up at Buddy.

It takes him a moment, but then Buddy gets it, like she trusted him to. A slow smile spreads across his face. He is already rising from the chair, fishing up a note from his coat pocket. “We've changed our mind about the coffee,” he says, still looking at his wife, “I think we'll go see a movie instead.”

Irene gapes as Buddy puts the bill on the table next to his untouched cup of coffee. She is still standing with her mouth open as they leave the shop, the little bell on the door merrily announcing their exit.

Walking out into the street like this, arm in arm with her husband, like a comrade - under a dozen watchful eyes - Carol feels overwhelmingly alive.

... Now, we'll follow them down to the cinema, where Duck and Dan are still waiting. But once we're there, we'll give the four of them a little privacy for their nervous, heartfelt exchanges, before Carol and Buddy buy their tickets and settle in to their seats. The words aren't all that important. The gestures say it all.

Outside, the sun is setting over the Watch. The last rays of sunshine sparkle in the quiet waters. In the next couple of days, Duck and Dan will have plenty to do, lacing up film and selling tickets to the first daring groups of islanders.

But for now, Carol settles in against Buddy's shoulder in the dark of the cinema. On the row behind them, Dan tentatively reaches for Duck's hand. He touches Duck's wrist before sliding their fingers together. The two men share a long look in the silence. Dan smiles, and then the stylus falls into the first groove on the soundtrack record, and the music starts playing just as Rudolf Valentino appears on the big screen, bringing a little taste of the _Roaring Twenties_ to Wilby Island.

 

 

  


 


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